The Chinese Nw Year, which occurs on Wednesday (it’s 4696, the Year of the Tiger), is a happy, noisy time. “Dragons” and “lions” and, this year especially, “tigers,” dance and roar in the streets and in restaurants. Children are given presents as tokens of achievement and good luck, and give thanks for their blessings.
In the culinary area, count noodles among those blessings.
“On Chinese New Year’s Eve, we always dined on vegetarian noodles,” says television cooking teacher Ken Hom. “For the Chinese, the long noodles symbolize a long life. I was always told not to cut the noodles because if I did, it was going to bring bad luck.”
Noodles of all lengths are bringing good luck to restaurant entrepreneurs in Chicago and other American cities.
“Americans are showing more and more interest in authentic Chinese food,” says Alex Moy, a manager at Phoenix restaurant, 2131 S. Archer Ave. “They are eager to try our wrapped noodle dumplings from the dim sum carts and the pan-fry or braised main dishes made with all sorts of noodles. And at New Year’s everyone wants them.”
There is a groundswell of interest in noodle dishes from China as well as Japan and Southeast Asia. Inexpensive noodle shops such as Penny’s (two locations) are playing to standing-room crowds. So are stir-fry grill operations such as Flat Top Grill (three locations) and Stir Crazy Cafe (three locations). And noodles are signature items in more elaborate restaurants such as Phoenix, Bistro Pacific and Wonton Club.
“Asian noodles are becoming the pasta of the ’90s,” says Roger Greenfield, whose Restaurant Development Group operates Wonton Club.
Bruce Cost, an Asian food specialist who works with Lettuce Entertain You on its Big Bowl restaurants, agrees.
“There’s a lot of activity involving Asian noodles,” he says. “Asian noodle dishes have flavor and taste. They’re healthful and relatively inexpensive to produce because most contain lots of vegetables and go light on protein. Furthermore, the Italian/Mediterranean pasta category is pretty well saturated.”
There have been rumors abroad for some time that some consumers have actually become bored with pasta. This is a condition to which no Italian would ever confess, yet if the ennui spreads, people craving a different, flavorful pasta fix are likely to pick up a pair of chopsticks and begin eating Asian.
Meanwhile, home cooks are developing a taste for these dishes by travel to Asia or by dining out in Asian or fusion restaurants. Asian ingredients and cookbooks are relatively easy to find for those who want to re-create them at home.
China has a strong claim to being the home of the noodle. Although various forms of dough wrappers were in use by the 1st Century B.C., Cost pins the introduction of spaghetti-shaped pasta in northern China to that time, citing the introduction of large-scale milling of flour as the impetus. No recipes survive, but although the Italians developed shaped pasta on their own well before Marco Polo’s travels, Chinese formulas from even earlier do exist, Cost says.
Before extrusion machinery was widely available, deft Chinese noodlemakers would twirl and toss a hunk of dough and gradually transform it into strands of pasta. A few noodlemakers still practice this art at restaurant festivals.
Chinese do not make noodles at home, though, buying them instead, fresh or dried, in markets. Noodle factories still exist in or near Chinatown in many American cities. (See story this page.)
In “Bruce Cost’s Asian Ingredients,” Cost writes that flourwheat, rice or bean-is what distinguishes Asian noodles from one another.
Only wheat flour and water are used for noodles native to northern China, while wheat flour is combined with egg in southern China.
Rice flour noodles, often called rice vermicelli, come dried in various thicknesses. Usually, these are not cooked, but simply soaked in hot water until soft (about 20 minutes). When fried without soaking, they puff and are used as nests or broken into pieces and scattered over salads. Wide rice noodles make wrappers for dim sum.
Mung bean flour is made into “cellophane” noodles. Usually very thin, they are used in soups and stir-fries and can be deep-fried to make a bed for a stir-fry preparation.
(Elsewhere in Asia, noodles are prepared with flour from mung beans, soybeans, potatoes, buckwheat and bean curd.)
The Chinese prepare most noodles in one of four ways:
Lo mein, or stir-fried, in Canton. Noodles are pre-cooked, then tossed with other ingredients.
– Chow mein,or pan-fried, in Hong Kong. Noodles are cooked, drained, then shaped into a nest and fried to make the exterior brown and crisp while the interior remains soft. The basket is filled with a stir-fry combination.
– With sauce. The noodles are cooked, then tossed, hot or cold, with a sauce or served with sauce on the side.
– In soup. Cooked noodles are added to a broth, then topped with meat and vegetables.
Some hints: Chinese noodles are long (for good luck) and slippery. They are not easy to eat, especially with chopsticks. The Chinese don’t make pasta into fanciful shapes as Italians do. Most are sold in 12-inch strands; thinner noodles may be wrapped into “sticks” or “nests.”
Cooking directions on packages can be “wildly inaccurate,” Cost says. He recommends testing by biting into a noodle and remembering the Chinese prefer noodles cooked until soft, not al dente. When parboiling Chinese noodles for use later, drain them after cooking and toss immediately with a little oil to keep them from sticking.
As for tempting children to try these noodles from half a world away, you might point out that in China it is perfectly polite to eat them by slurping.
INSIDE A NOODLE FACTORY
The Chinese eat fresh or dried noodles almost every day. Supplying them are the noodle “bakeries” that thrive in or near every Chinatown in America.
In Chicago, the Quon Yick Bakery, 639 W. 26th St., hides behind a windowless red brick facade with a red door in the shadow of the Dan Ryan Expressway. But inside, it’s a clean, busy plant in which Chinese women imitate machines six days a week, producing 2,500 pounds of fresh noodles that are sold to restaurants and markets.
Chinese bakers use several different flours to create noodles with a variety of textures. The flour of choice at Quon Yick is rice. No wheat noodles are produced here, says manager Hong Zheng, 36, leading a tour of the premises. Zheng came here from a similar operation in China six years ago, he says.
The workers perform a choreographed drill: They ladle thin batters of rice flour, water, salt and oil into pans glazed with vegetable-oil spray. The pans go into giant water-filled woks to steam for a short time. The workers remove the cooked noodles, allow them to cool briefly, then quickly cut and roll or fold them for transport to local restaurants or markets.
The women make only two types of rice noodles, one of which is the sheets of dough used as wrappers for dim sum.
The soft dough is rolled over a filling of tiny dried shrimp and green onion to make a thin, 12-inch rolled crepe. These are destined to be reheated in steamers and served from carts with a concentrated, sweetened soy sauce.
The other type, thick, glutinous and slippery, are cut into 3/4-inch strips at the restaurant and added to stir-fry dishes or browned briefly and tossed with a sauce.
GROWING UP CHINESE IN AMERICA
Chinese New Year is an opportune time to make the acquaintance of a Chinese cook who’s eager to share what he considers his good fortune to be brought up in Chicago’s Chinatown.
Ken Hom, teacher (on public television in this country and Britain and at classes in California and Hong Kong) and author of more than a dozen cookbooks, tells of the foods and family life of his youth in “Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood” (Knopf, $27.50).
Hom testifies that the dual menu (one for Chinese, another for Americans) was a reality in Chinese restaurants here and elsewhere.
“I grew up in Chicago in the 1950s, but in a parallel society,” he recalled. “We lived in a Chinese island surrounded by Americans. I didn’t speak English until I was 6, in elementary school. We held a stereotype of Americans, just as they held a stereotype of us. And there really was a cultural leap between American and Chinese cooking.
“Americans like food fried with lots of sauce. They like lots of sugar but still want low fat. Chinese seek to balance sweet and sour, fat and lean. American cooks do short preparation and cook a dish for a long time. Chinese preparation is time-consuming, but the food is cooked quickly.
“As a kid, I prepared takeout orders and most of them were for sweet-and-sour-pork, fried rice, and chow mein, foods we Chinese-Americans never ate.”
The gap still has not been bridged. A non-Chinese customer still may have to insist to receive food prepared in the authentic Chinese manner-and still may not get it.
“It’s easy for an American cook to feel daunted if all he knows is Chinese restaurant food,” Hom says. “He won’t have a proper frame of taste reference to make the real thing.”
So he offers a hand in “Easy Family Recipes,” encouraging cooks to become familiar with a few Chinese techniques and ingredients, and to try cooking with a wok.
There are 150 recipes, several of them offering comparisons of Chinese and Chinese-American preparations of dishes such as lemon chicken and chop suey.
“Common sense and a little coordination will do it,” he says. “Once you’ve mastered the basics you can prepare anything American, from chicken and noodles to leftovers, in the Chinese manner.”
BIG BOWL’S BLAZING RICE NOODLES
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 8-10 minutes
Yield: 2 servings
2 teaspoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil plus extra
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 ounces flank steak, slightly frozen, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons each: oyster sauce, light soy sauce
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
6 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
1/2 package (30-ounce package) fresh rice noodles, sliced into 4-inch widths
1/2 jalapeno pepper, or more to taste, cut into strips
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 piece (1-inch) ginger root, peeled, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons salted black beans
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into strips
3 green onions, white portion cut into 2-inch lengths, green portion sliced
2 baby bok choy, each sliced lengthwise into quarters
3/4 cup chicken broth, homemade preferred
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1. Combine 1 teaspoon of the dark soy, cornstarch, sesame oil and salt in medium bowl. Add beef; stir to coat. Set aside. Combine remaining teaspoon of the dark soy, oyster sauce, light soy, vinegar and sugar in separate bowl. Mix; set aside.
2. Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in wok or skillet until hot but not smoking. Add beef; cook, stirring, until meat begins to change color, about 1 minute. Remove; drain well.
3. Clean wok or skillet; heat until very hot. Heat remaining 3 tablespoons of the oil. Add noodles; toss to coat. Cook, stirring frequently, until noodles brown slightly, 2 minutes. Stir in jalapeno, garlic, ginger root and black beans. Cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes.
4. Add bell pepper, white portion of green onions and bok choy. Cook, stirring constantly, until heated through, 1 to 2 minutes. Return beef to wok; stir to reheat. Stir in oyster sauce mixture. Add broth; stir over high heat until most of liquid has evaporated. Transfer to platter; sprinkle with green portion of green onions, sesame oil and black pepper.
Nutrition information per serving
Calories ……… 845 Sodium …. 2,105 mg Fat ……. 35 g
Carbohydrates .. 105 g Cholesterol .. 35 mg Protein … 25 g
STIR CRAZY CAFE’S SEAFOOD PRIMAVERA
Preparation time 45 minutes
Cooking time 7 minutes
Yield 4 servings
1 package (16 ounces) dried thin wheat flour noodles
Salt
4 tablespoons peanut oil
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon plus 11/2 teaspoons cornstarch
3/4 cup homemade chicken stock or reduced-salt canned chicken broth
3 tablespoons rice wine or dry sherry
2 tablespoons each sesame oil, oyster sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon each sugar, lightsoy sauce, rice vinegar, Chinese chili oil
Pinch white pepper
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined
1/2 pound scallops, quartered if large
1/4 pound squid, cut into 1/4-inch rings
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, seeded, cutinto strips
4 or 5 green onions, cut into1-inch pieces
1. Heat 5 quarts of water to boil; add noodles and pinch salt. Boil, stirring occasionally, until noodles are soft, about 30 seconds. Drain; transfer to bowl. Toss with 2 tablespoons of the peanut oil. Set aside. Mix 2 tablespoons water and cornstarch in small bowl; set aside.
2. Combine 1 tablespoon of the peanut oil, chicken stock, rice wine, sesame oil, oyster sauce, half of the garlic, sugar, light soy, vinegar, chili oil and white pepper in small bowl. Mix well; set aside.
3. Heat wok or large skillet over high heat. Add remaining tablespoon peanut oil and remaining garlic. Stir-fry briefly. Add shrimp, scallops and squid; stir-fry 30 seconds. Add sauce mixture; heat to boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer 3 minutes. Add reserved noodles, mushrooms and bell pepper. Cook until noodles are heated through, 1 minute. Stir in cornstarch-water mixture. Heat to boil, stirring constantly, until thickened. Transfer to platter; garnish with green onion.
Calories ……… 850 Sodium ….. 1,130 mg Fat …….. 30 g
Carbohydrates .. 104 g Cholesterol .. 210 mg Protein …. 41 g
ASIAN PESTO WITH NOODLES
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 4 minutes
Yield: 5 servings
This Asian version of the famous Italian sauce is from Bruce Cost.
1/2 cups packed fresh Asian basil
1/4 cup each, packed: fresh Asian mint, cilantro
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/2 cup raw peanuts, skinless, or dry roasted, see note
2 small fresh green chilies
1 piece (2 inches) ginger root, peeled, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 package (30-ounce package) fresh wheat flour noodles
1. Combine basil, mint and cilantro in small bowl; set aside. Heat oil in small skillet; add peanuts. Fry until lightly browned, about 10 seconds. Drain; reserve oil.
2. Put peanuts in food processor container fitted with metal blade or in blender. Puree until rough paste forms. Add chilies, ginger and garlic with motor running. Add herbs and a little reserved oil. Add lemon juice, salt and sugar. Process until herbs are finely minced. Add remaining oil with motor running; process until blended.
3. Heat large pot of water to boil; add noodles. Cook until soft, about 4 minutes. Drain. Add pesto sauce; toss lightly to mix.
Note: Raw peanuts can be purchased in bulk food stores, specialty stores and some health food stores. Look for the basil and mint at Asian food shops.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories …….. 460 Sodium …… 720 mg Fat …….. 30 g
Carbohydrates .. 38 g Cholesterol .. 35 mg Protein …. 12 g
VEGETARIAN NEW YEAR NOODLES
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Soaking time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 4-5 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
This quick dish is adapted from “Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood,” by Ken Hom.
1. Soak rice noodles in warm water 20 minutes. Drain well; set aside.
2. Heat wok or large frying pan over high heat. Add peanut oil; heat until very hot and almost smoking. Stir in cabbage, garlic and ginger. Stir-fry 1 minute. Add broth, rice wine, sugar, bean sauce and soy sauces. Stir innoodles; mix well. Reduce heat to low; simmer 3 minutes. Stir in sesame oil. Transfer to large bowl or platter. Top with green onions and cilantro.
1 package (8 ounces) dried thin rice noodles
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1/2 cup finely chopped preserved or pickled cabbage
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 piece (1 inch) fresh ginger root, peeled, finely chopped
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon each: sugar, chili bean sauce, dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil
4 green onions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories …….. 315 Sodium … 1,980 mg Fat ……. 7 g
Carbohydrates .. 58 g Cholesterol .. 0 mg Protein … 4 g
